CJ Fearnley's Favorite Quotes and Poems

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342 of my favorite quotes and poems were found.

Dare to be naïve.
--- R. Buckminster Fuller
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The things to do are: the things that need doing: that you see
need to be done, and that no one else seems to see need to be done.
Then you will conceive your own way of doing that which needs to be
done -- that no one else has told you to do or how to do it. This
will bring out the real you that often gets buried inside a character
that has acquired a superficial array of behaviors induced or imposed
by others on the individual.
--- R. Buckminster Fuller
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All of humanity now has the option to "make it" successfully and
sustainably, by virtue of our having minds, discovering principles and
being able to employ these principles to do more with less.
--- R. Buckminster Fuller
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As for the future, your task is not to foresee it, but to enable it.
--- Antoine de Saint Exupéry
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No one knows what he can do till he tries.
--- Publilius Syrus, Maxim 786
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Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations
that we can do without thinking about them.
--- Alfred North Whitehead, 1911
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Geometry is the study of figures and figures. Figures as in shapes and
figures as in numbers.
--- H. S. M. Coxeter
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There is no branch of mathematics, however abstract, which may not someday be
applied to phenomena of the real world.
--- Nikolai Ivanovich Lobatchevsky
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Failure is instructive. The person who really thinks learns quite as much
from his failures as from his successes.
--- John Dewey
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It is difficult to say what is impossible, for the dreams of yesterday are the
hopes of today, and the realities of tomorrow.
--- Robert H. Goddard
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Walt Whitman's Caution
To The States, or any one of them, or any city of The States,
Resist much, obey little;
Once unquestioning obedience, once fully enslaved;
Once fully enslaved, no nation, state, city, of this earth,
ever afterward resumes its liberty. 1860
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Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can
change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
--- Margaret Mead
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Success covers a multitude of blunders.
--- George Bernard Shaw
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If I were to prescribe one process in the training of men (sic) which is
fundamental to success in any direction, it would be thoroughgoing training in
the habit of accurate observation. It is a habit which every one of us should
be seeking ever more to perfect.
--- Eugene G. Grace
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Commitment
Until one is committed
there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back,
always ineffectiveness.
Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation),
there is one elementary truth,
the ignorance of which kills countless ideas
and splendid plans:
That the moment one definitely commits oneself,
then Providence moves too.
All sorts of things occur to help one
that would otherwise never have occurred.
A whole stream of events issues from the decision,
raising in one's favor all manner
of unforeseen incidents and meetings
and material assistance,
which no man could have dreamt
would have come his way.
I have learned a deep respect
for one of Goethe's couplets:
``Whatever you can do, or dream you can -- begin it.
Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.''
--- W.N. Murray from The Scottish Himalayan Expedition, 1951
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If it's worth doing, it's worth doing poorly.
--- Ken Iverson (Nucor saying)
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After all, it is only the mediocre who are always at their best.
--- Jean Giraudoux
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Every human being must be viewed, according to what it is good for; for none
of us, no not one, is perfect; and were we to love none who had
imperfections, this world would be a desert for our love.
--- Thomas Jefferson
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My own working assumption of why we are here is that we are here as
local-Universe information-gatherers and that we are given access to the
divine design principles so that we can therefrom objectively invent
instruments and tools -- e.g., the microscope and the telescope --
with which to extend all sensorial inquiring regarding the rest of
the to-the-naked-eye-invisible, micro-macro Universe, because human
beings, tiny though we are, are here for all the local-Universe
information-harvesting and cosmic-principle-discovering, objective
tool-inventing, and local-environment-controlling as local Universe
problem-solvers in support of the integrity of eternally regenerative
Universe.
--- R. Buckminster Fuller
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I've taught myself a lesson, or I hope I have: when I find myself thinking
something I stop a minute and ask myself, Now who had it all figured out
beforehand that was the way they wanted me to think?
--- Kitty Foyle in Christopher Morley's novel ``Kitty Foyle''
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Education is what survives when what has been learnt has been forgotten.
--- B.F. Skinner
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Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature ... Life
is either a daring adventure or nothing.
--- Helen Keller
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Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and
the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced.
--- Albert Einstein, "Ideas and Opinions", 1954
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You can go far with a lie, but you can't come back.
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A mob is a monster with many hands and no brains.
--- Anonymous
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"Contrariwise", continued Tweedledee, "If it was so, it might be; and
if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's
logic."
--- Lewis Carroll
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On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!], `Pray,
Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right
answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of
confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.
--- Charles Babbage
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Until we extend the circle of our compassion to all living
things, we will not ourselves find peace.
--- Albert Schweitzer
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I figure that if God actually does exist, He's big enough to understand an
honest difference of opinion.
--- Isaac Asimov
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Nobody perceives anything with total accuracy.
--- Jack A. Marshall
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No man steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river,
and he's not the same man.
--- Heraclitus
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Normality is a statistical illusion.
--- Stephen Zander
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A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson
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It has long been known that one horse can run faster than another --
but which one? Differences are crucial.
--- Lazarus Long
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Premature optimization is the root of all evil.
--- Donald Knuth
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Our loyalties are to the species and the planet. We speak for Earth. Our
obligation to survive is owed not just to ourselves but also to that
Cosmos, ancient and vast, from which we spring.
--- Carl Sagan
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The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more
certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not
lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith,
but through striving after rational knowledge.
--- Albert Einstein
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Technology makes it possible for people to gain control over
everything, except over technology.
--- John Tudor
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The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is
comprehensible.
--- Albert Einstein
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Everything that exceeds the bounds of moderation has an unstable
foundation.
--- Seneca
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All good conversation, manners and action, come from a spontaneity which
forgets usages and makes the moment great. Nature hates calculators; her
methods are saltatory and impulsive.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson
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There are two kinds of people, those who do the work and those who take
the credit. Try to be in the first group; there is less competition there.
--- Indira Gandhi
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The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are
always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.
--- Bertrand Russell
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The difference between the right word and a similar word is the
difference between lightning and a lightning bug.
--- Mark Twain
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Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he
could only do a little.
--- Edmund Burke
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Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that
you do it.
--- Mahatma Gandhi
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The Lump Law: If we want to learn anything, we mustn't try to learn
everything.
--- anonymous
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There are routes not to be followed, armies not to be
attacked, citadels not to be besieged, territory not to be fought
over, orders of civilian governments not to be obeyed.
--- Sun Tzu
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Truth is the most valuable thing we have -- so let us economize it.
--- Mark Twain
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If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for
reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.
--- Albert Einstein
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How much net work could a network work, if a network could net work?
--- Manoj Srivastava
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After the game the king and the pawn go in the same box.
--- Italian proverb
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Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
--- Benjamin Franklin
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Do not seek death; death will find you. But seek the road which
makes death a fulfillment.
--- Dag Hammarskjold
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Only the foolish and the dead never change their opinions.
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The starting point of all individual achievement is the adoption of
a definite purpose and a definite plan for its attainment.
--- Napoleon Hill
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Any body suspended in space will remain in space until made aware of
its situation. Daffy Duck steps off a cliff, expecting further
pastureland. He loiters in midair, soliloquizing flippantly, until
he chances to look down. At this point, the familiar principle of 32
feet per second per second takes over.
--- Esquire, "O'Donnell's Laws of Cartoon Motion", June 1980
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We are what we are and it's never enough.
--- Chris de Burgh
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Rule of Creative Research: Never draw what you can copy. Never copy
what you can trace. Never trace what you can cut out and paste down.
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If anger is not restrained, it is frequently more hurtful to us, than
the injury that provokes it.
--- Seneca
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I object to intellect without discipline; I object to power without
constructive purpose.
--- Spock, "The Squire of Gothos", stardate 2124.5
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A pessimist is a man who has been compelled to live with an optimist.
--- Elbert Hubbard
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The hands that help are better far than the lips that pray.
--- Robert G. Ingersoll
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It is not for me to change you. The question is, how can I be of service
to you without diminishing your degrees of freedom?
--- R. Buckminster Fuller
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I see little divinity about them or you. You talk to me of
Christianity when you are in the act of hanging your enemies. Was
there ever such blasphemous nonsense!
--- George Bernard Shaw, "The Devil's Disciple"
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Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it
as such.
--- Henry Miller
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In life we are all duffers.
--- Emanuel Lasker
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Of my fifty-seven years I have applied at least thirty to forgetting
most of what I had learned or read, and since I succeeded in this I
have acquired a certain ease and cheer which I should never again like
to be without.
--- Emanual Lasker
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I heartily accept the motto, -- `that government is best which
governs least;' and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly
and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which
also I believe, -- `that government is best which governs not at all;'
and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government
which they will have.
--- Henry David Thoreau
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We have reached the point where we are now possessed of sufficient
information for each individual human to dare to exercise the option
to ``make it'' rather than having to depend on the decisions of an
educated elite.
--- R. Buckminster Fuller
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I think that I shall never see
a billboard lovely as a tree.
Indeed, unless the billboards fall
I'll never see a tree at all.
--- Ogden Nash "Song of the Open Road"
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Law of conservation of Ignorance: A false conclusion once arrived
at and widely accepted is not easily dislodged and the less it is
understood, the more tenaciously it is held.
--- attributed to Georg Cantor
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Man is a religious animal. He's the only one who's got the true
religion -- several of them.
--- Mark Twain
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The lesson of history is that our firmest convictions are not to be
asserted dogmatically; in fact they should be most suspect; they mark
not our conquests but our limitations and our bounds.
--- Morris Kline
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Humble thyself, impotent reason!
--- Pascal
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[Proof is no more than] the testing of the products of our intuition
... Obviously we don't possess, and probably will never possess,
any standard of proof that is independent of time, the thing to
be proved, or the person or school of thought using it. And under
these conditions, the sensible thing to do seems to be to admit that
there is no such thing, generally, as absolute truth in mathematics,
whatever the public may think.
--- Raymond L. Wilder
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There are no solved problems; there are only problems more or less
solved.
--- Henri Poincaré
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Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an
experiment.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Do or do not. There is no try.
--- Yoda
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If you think you can do a thing or think you can't do a thing, you're
right.
--- Henry Ford
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Nothing is so much to be feared as fear.
--- Henry David Thoreau
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Destiny is not a matter of chance; it is a matter of choice. It
is not a thing to be waited for; it is a thing to be achieved.
--- William Jennings Bryan
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The Great Way flows everywhere,
To the left and to the right.
The ten thousand things
Depend on it for life.
It nourishes them all,
Holding nothing back.
It accomplishes what needs to be,
But takes no credit.
It clothes and feeds all things,
Yet it does not claim
To be their lord.
It asks for nothing in return.
It may be called the Small.
The ten thousand things
Follow it,
Return to it.
Yet it does not claim
To be their lord.
Therefore, it may be called
The Great.
So too the wise may become great,
By becoming small.
--- Lao Tzu
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I have three treasures,
Which I guard and keep.
The first is compassion.
The second is economy.
The third is humility.
From compassion comes courage.
From economy comes the means to be generous.
From humility comes responsible leadership.
Today, men have discarded compassion
In order to be bold.
They have abandoned economy
In order to be big spenders.
They have rejected humility
In order to be first.
This is the road to death.
--- Lao Tzu
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Great man retains child's mind.
--- Meng-Tse
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What you see is all you get.
--- Brian Kernighan
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Not to dream boldly may turn out to be simply irresponsible.
--- George Leonard
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Nothing is too wonderful to be true.
--- Michael Faraday
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It's not the days in your life, but the life in your days that counts.
--- Brian White
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Management should work for the engineers, not the other way around.
--- Brian White
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Touch passion when it comes your way. It's rare enough as it is;
don't walk away when it calls you by name.
--- Marcus (Babylon 5)
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There is enough for the world's needs but not enough for the world's greed.
--- Gandhi
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We are most probably here for local information-gathering and
local-Universe problem-solving in support of the integrity of eternally
regenerative Universe.
--- R. Buckminster Fuller
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Pancreas
tongue-shaped, organ
behind stomach, lives, dies
metabolizes food stuffs
Pancreas.
--- CJ Fearnley
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To a Mouse
by Robert Burns
On turning her up in her nest
with the plough, November 1785
Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim'rous beastie,
O, what a panic's in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty,
Wi' bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee,
Wi' murd'ring pattle!
I'm truly sorry Man's dominion
Has broken Nature's social union,
An' justifies that ill opinion
Which makes thee startle
At me, thy poor, earth-born companion
An' fellow mortal!
I doubt na, whyles, but thou may thieve;
What then? Poor beastie, thou maun live.
A daimen icker in a thrave,
'S a sma' request;
I'll get a blessin wi' the lave,
An' never miss 't!
Thy wee-bit housie, too, in ruin!
Its silly wa's the win's are strewin!
An' naething, now to big a new ane,
O' foggage green!
An' bleak December's win's ensuin,
Baith snell an' keen!
Thou saw the fields laid bare an' waste,
An' weary winter comin fast,
An' cozie here, beneath the blast,
Thou thought to dwell,
Till crash! The cruel coulter past
Out thro' thy cell.
Thy wee-bit heap o' leaves an' stibble,
Has cost thee monie a weary nibble!
Now thou 's turn'd out, for a' thy trouble,
But house or hald,
To thole the winter's sleety dribble,
An' cranreuch cauld!
But Mousie, thou art no thy lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft agley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!
Still, thou art blest, compar'd wi' me!
The present only toucheth thee:
But och! I backward cast me e'e,
On prospects drear!
An' forward, tho' I canna see,
I guess an' fear!
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To a Child
The greatest poem ever known
Is one all poets have outgrown:
The poetry, innate, untold,
Of being only four years old.
Still young enough to be a part
Of Nature's great impulsive heart,
Born comrade of bird, beast and tree
And unselfconscious as the bee --
And yet with lovely reason skilled
Each day new paradise to build.
Elate explorer of each sense,
Without dismay, without pretense!
In your unstained, transparent eyes
There is no conscience, no surprise:
Life's queer conundrums you accept
Your strange divinity still kept.
Being that now enthralls you, all
Harmonious, unit, integral,
Will shed into perplexing bits --
Oh, contradiction of the wits!
And Life, that puts all things in rhyme
May make you poet, too, in time --
But there were days, O tender elf,
When you were Poetry itself!
--- Christopher Morley (1922)
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Cosmic Plurality
by R. Buckminster Fuller
Environment to each must be
All there is, that isn't me.
Universe in turn must be
All that isn't me AND ME.
Since I only see inside of me
What brain imagines outside me,
It seems to be you may be me.
If that is so, there's only we.
Me and we, too
Which love makes three,
Universe
Perme-embracing
It-Them-You-and-We.
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If all good people were clever,
And all clever people were good,
The world would be nicer than ever
We thought that it possibly could.
But somehow, 'tis seldom or never
That the two hit it off as they should;
For the good are so harsh to the clever,
The clever so rude to the good.
--- Elizabeth Wordsworth
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To a Louse
By Robert Burns
On seeing one on a lady's bonnet
at church
Ha! Whare ye gaun, ye crowlin ferlie?
Your impudence protects you sairly,
I canna say but ye strunt rarely
Owre gauze and lace,
Tho' faith! I fear ye dine but sparely
On sic a place.
Ye ugly, creepin, blastit wonner,
Detested, shunn'd by saunt an' sinner,
How daur ye set your fit upon her --
Sae fine a lady!
Gae somewhere else and seek your dinner
On some poor body.
Swith! in some beggar's hauffett squattle:
There ye may creep, and sprawl, and sprattle,
Wi' ither kindred, jumping cattle,
In shoals and nations;
Whare horn nor bane ne'er daur unsettle
Your thick plantations.
Now haud you there! Ye 're out o' sight,
Below the fatt'rils, snug an' tight;
Na, faith ye yet! ye'll no be right,
Till ye've got on it --
The vera tapmost, tow'ring height
O' Miss's bonnet.
My sooth! right bauld ye set your nose out,
As plump an' grey as onie grozet:
O for some rank, mercurial rozet,
Or fell, red smeddum,
I'd gie ye sic a hearty dose o 't,
Wad dress your droddum.
I wad na been surpris'd to spy
You on an auld wife's flainen toy;
Or aiblins some bit duddie boy,
On 's wyliecoat;
But Miss's fine Lunardi! fye!
How daur ye do 't?
O Jenny, dinna toss your head,
An' set your beauties a' abread!
Ye little ken what curs`ed speed
The blastie 's makin!
Thae winks an' finger-ends, I dread,
Are notice takin!
O wad some power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae monie a blunder free us,
An' foolish notion:
What airs in dress an' gait wad lea'e us,
An' ev'n devotion!
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Is There for Honest Poverty
By Robert Burns
Is there for honest poverty
That hings his head, an' a' that?
The coward-slave, we pass him by --
We dare be poor for a' that!
For a' that, an' a' that,
Our toils obscure, an' a' that,
The rank is but the guinea's stamp,
The man's the gowd for a' that.
What though on hamely fare we dine,
Wear hoddin grey, an' a' that?
Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine --
A man's a man for a' that.
For a' that, an' a' that,
Their tinsel show, an' a' that,
The honest man, tho' e'er sae poor,
Is king o' men for a' that.
Ye see yon birkie ca'd "a lord,"
Wha struts, an' stares, an' a' that?
Tho' hundreds worship at his word,
He's but a cuif for a' that.
For a' that, an' a' that,
His ribband star, an' a' that,
The man o' independent mind,
He looks an' laughs at a' that.
A prince can mak a belted knight,
A marquis, duke, an' a' that!
But an honest man's aboon his might --
Guid faith, he mauna fa' that!
For a' that, an' a' that,
Their dignities, an' a' that,
The pith o' Sense an' Pride o' worth
Are higher rank than a' that.
Then let us pray that come it may
(as come it will for a' that)
That Sense and Worth o'er a' the earth
Shall bear the gree an' a' that!
For a' that, an' a' that,
It's comin yet for a' that,
That man to man the world o'er
Shall brithers be for a' that.
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Regarding the power-structure-supported scriptures' legend of woman
emanating from a man's rib, there is no experiential evidence.
Humanity now knows that only women can conceive, gestate, and bear both
male and female humans. Women are the continuum of human life. Like the
tension of gravity-cohering space-islanded galaxies, stars, planets, and
atoms, women are continuous. Men are discontinuous space islands. Men,
born forth only from the wombs of women, have the function of activating
women's reproductivity.
--- From Integrity by R. Buckminster Fuler
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It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a
prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty
to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is
at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt.
--- John Philpot Curran: Speech upon the Right of Election, 1790.
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The reasonable man adopts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adopt the world to himself. Therefore all progress
depends on the unreasonable man.
--- George Bernard Shaw
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Practice yourself, for heaven's sake, in little things; and thence proceed to
greater.
--- Epictetus
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Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good
people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good
people to do evil things, that takes religion.
--- Steven Weinberg
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A mathematical theory is not to be considered complete until you have made it
so clear that you can explain it to the first man whom you meet on the street.
--- An Old French Mathematician quoted by David Hilbert
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I live on Earth at present,
and I don't know what I am.
I know that I am not a category.
I am not a thing -- a noun.
I seem to be a verb,
an evolutionary process --
an integral function of the universe.
--- R. Buckminster Fuller
------------------------------------------------------------
There is something patently insane about all the typewriters sleeping
with all the beautiful plumbing in the beautiful office buildings --
and all the people sleeping in the slums.
--- R. Buckminster Fuller
------------------------------------------------------------
We are on a spaceship; a beautiful one. It took billions of years to develop.
We're not going to get another. Now, how do we make this spaceship work?
--- R. Buckminster Fuller
------------------------------------------------------------
In the United States, throughout all 24 hours of every day of the year -- year
after year -- we have an average of 2,000,000 automobiles standing in front of
red stoplights with their engines going, the energy for which amounts to that
generated by the full efforts of 200 million horses being completely wasted as
they jump up and down going nowhere.
--- R. Buckminster Fuller
------------------------------------------------------------
War is the ultimate tool of politics. Political leaders look out only for
their own side. Politicians are always realistically maneuvering for the next
election. They are obsolete as fundamental problem-solvers.
--- R. Buckminster Fuller
------------------------------------------------------------
The most important fact about Spaceship Earth:
an instruction manual didn't come with it.
--- R. Buckminster Fuller
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We must learn to love each other as brothers or perish together as fools.
--- Martin Luther King
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Think wrongly if you please, but in all cases think for yourself.
--- Doris Lessing
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There is nothing so strong as gentleness, and there is nothing so gentle
as real strength.
--- St. Francis de Sales
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It is well that war is so terrible, lest we grow too fond of it.
--- Robert E. Lee
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Try to learn something about everything and everything about
something.
--- T.H. Huxley
------------------------------------------------------------
This is a time for a loud voice,
open speech, and fearless thinking.
I rejoice that I live in such a
splendidly disturbing time.
--- Helen Keller
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The greatest purveyor of violence in the world today is my own
government ... for the sake of humanity I cannot be silent.
--- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
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The present moment is the only moment available to us, and it is
the door to all moments.
--- Thich Nhat Hanh
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Fear not the path of truth, for the lack of people walking on it.
--- Robert Francis Kennedy
------------------------------------------------------------
How wonderful that no one need wait a single moment to improve
the world.
--- Anne Frank (The Diary of Anne Frank)
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The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.
--- Eleanor Roosevelt
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Any human anywhere will blossom in a hundred unexpected talents and capacities
simply by being given the opportunity to do so.
--- Doris Lessing
------------------------------------------------------------
Progress always involves risk. You can't steal second base and keep your foot
on first.
--- Frederick B. Wilcox
------------------------------------------------------------
Since it is now physically and metaphysically demonstrable that the chemical
elements resources of Earth already mined or in recirculation, plus the
knowledge we now have, are adequate to the support of all humanity and can be
feasibly redesign-employed [...] to support all humanity at a higher standard
of living than ever before enjoyed by any human, war is now and henceforth
murder. All weapons are invalid. Lying is intolerable. All politics are not
only obsolete but lethal.
--- R. Buckminster Fuller
------------------------------------------------------------
[Design Science is] the effective application of the principles of science to
the conscious design of our total environment in order to help make the
Earth's finite resources meet the needs of all humanity without disrupting the
ecological processes of the planet.
--- R. Buckminster Fuller
------------------------------------------------------------
Design is the thought process comprising the creation of an entity.
--- William Miller http://wrmdesign.com/
------------------------------------------------------------
Meyers Law: It is simple to make things complex, it is complex to make things
simple
------------------------------------------------------------
In our haste to deal with the things that are wrong, let us not upset the
things that are right.
------------------------------------------------------------
Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off the
goal.
--- Hanna More
------------------------------------------------------------
Beware of half-truths, you may have got the wrong half.
------------------------------------------------------------
There is a mighty big difference between good sound reasons and reasons
that sound good.
--- Burton Hillis
------------------------------------------------------------
It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare. It
is because we do not dare that they are difficult.
--- Seneca
------------------------------------------------------------
In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments - there are
consequences.
--- R.D. Ingersoll
------------------------------------------------------------
You can't better the world by simply talking to it. Philosophy
to be effective must be mechanically applied.
--- R. Buckminster Fuller
------------------------------------------------------------
Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood.
--- Marie Curie
------------------------------------------------------------
When individuals join in a cooperative venture, the power generated far
exceeds what they could have accomplished acting individually.
--R. Buckminster Fuller
------------------------------------------------------------
A leader is best
When people barely know
That he exists,
Less good when
They obey and acclaim him,
Worse when
They fear and despise him.
Fail to honor people
And they fail to honor you.
But of a good leader,
When his work is done,
His aim fulfilled,
they will all say,
'We did this ourselves.
--- Lao-Tzu
------------------------------------------------------------
You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change
something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.
--- R. Buckminster Fuller
------------------------------------------------------------
Don't fight forces, use them
--- R. Buckminster Fuller
------------------------------------------------------------
Nothing is so powerful as an idea whose time has come,
--- Victor Hugo
------------------------------------------------------------
The only expansion we are interested in is the expansion of human freedom and
the wider enjoyment of the good things of the earth in all countries. The only
prize we covet is the respect and good will of our fellow members of the
family of nations. The only realm in which we aspire to eminence exists in the
minds of men, where authority is exercised through the qualities of sincerity,
compassion and right conduct.
--- Harry S. Truman
------------------------------------------------------------
Common sense is seeing things as they are; and
doing things as they ought to be.
--- Harriet Beecher Stowe
------------------------------------------------------------
Either you're going to go along with your mind
and the truth, or you're going to yield to fear
and custom and conditioned reflexes.
With our minds alone we can discover
those principles we need to employ to convert
all humanity to success in a new, harmonious
relationship with the universe.
We have the option to make it.
--- R. Buckminster Fuller
------------------------------------------------------------
Peace with all nations, and the right which that gives us with respect
to all nations, are our object.
--- Thomas Jefferson
------------------------------------------------------------
The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of
today. Let us move forward with strong and active faith.
--- Franklin D. Roosevelt
------------------------------------------------------------
Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and
leave a trail.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson
------------------------------------------------------------
The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a
little way past them into the impossible.
--Arthur C. Clarke
------------------------------------------------------------
The most destructive element in the human mind is fear. Fear creates
aggressiveness; aggressiveness engenders hostility; hostility engenders
fear -- a disastrous circle.
--- Dorothy Thompson
------------------------------------------------------------
To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we
are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic
and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.
--- Theodore Roosevelt.
------------------------------------------------------------
The world is my country, all mankind my brethren, and to do good is
my religion.
--- Thomas Paine
------------------------------------------------------------
You may never know what results come from your action. But if you do
nothing, there will be no results.
--- Gandhi
------------------------------------------------------------
Don't try to make me consistent. I am learning all the time.
--- R. Buckminster Fuller
------------------------------------------------------------
The truth is that not one of us, not me, not you, not any elected official,
ever accomplishes anything by themselves.
--- Howard Dean
------------------------------------------------------------
I have learned, that if one advances confidently in the direction of his
dreams, and endeavors to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with a
success unexpected in common hours.
--- Henry David Thoreau
------------------------------------------------------------
The thing always happens that you really believe in; and the belief in a thing
makes it happen.
--- Frank Lloyd Wright
------------------------------------------------------------
There is no energy crisis, food crisis or environmental crisis.
There is only a crisis of ignorance.
--- R. Buckminster Fuller
------------------------------------------------------------
Few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can
work to change a small portion of events, and in the total; of all those
acts will be written the history of this generation.
--- Robert F. Kennedy
------------------------------------------------------------
As long as half the world's population subsists on less than two dollars a
day, the US will not be secure.... A world populated by 'hostile have-nots' is
not one in which US leadership can be sustained without coercion.
--- Howard Dean
------------------------------------------------------------
There is something about human beings that corporations can't deal with and
that's our soul, our spirituality, who we are. We need to find a way in this
country to understand--and to help each other understand--that there is a
tremendous price to be paid for the supposed efficiency of big corporations.
The price is losing the sense of who we are as human beings.
--- Howard Dean
------------------------------------------------------------
In our nation, the people are sovereign, not the government. It is the people,
not the media or the financial system or mega-corporations or the two
political parties, who have the power to create change.
--- Howard Dean
------------------------------------------------------------
We shall be as one. We must delight in each other, make others conditions
our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together,
always living before our eyes our Commission and Community in our work.
--- John Winthrop
------------------------------------------------------------
All parts of the world are a part of ourselves. For a happy future we have to
take care of others' future.
--- Dalai Lama
------------------------------------------------------------
Peace is not just the absence of violence but the manifestation of human
compassion.
--- Dalai Lama
------------------------------------------------------------
When seen from outer space, our beautiful blue planet has no national
boundaries.
--- Dalai Lama
------------------------------------------------------------
There are no passengers on Spaceship Earth. We are all Crew!
--- Marshall McLuhan
------------------------------------------------------------
Science is what we understand well enough to explain to a computer.
Art is everything else we do.
--- Donald E. Knuth
------------------------------------------------------------
Each human has to take responsibility for the human condition or who else will
do it?
--- Dalai Lama
------------------------------------------------------------
Hateful thoughts and deep-down anger ruin your physical health, damage
rational thinking, and destroy friendships, key elements to true peace of
mind.
--- Dalai Lama
------------------------------------------------------------
If you do good for others, goodness will return to you.
--- Dalai Lama
------------------------------------------------------------
I take my own advice by treating everyone I meet as a friend, thereby
fostering a more human atmosphere.
--- Dalai Lama
------------------------------------------------------------
If the Success or Failure of this Planet, and of Human Beings,
Depended on How I Am and What I Do,
How Would I Be? What Would I Do?
--- R. Buckminster Fuller
------------------------------------------------------------
Vision without action is a daydream.
Action without vision is a nightmare.
--- Japanese Proverb
------------------------------------------------------------
When I'm working on a problem, I never think about Beauty, I think only how to
solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful,
I know it is wrong.
--- R. Buckminster Fuller
------------------------------------------------------------
Every gun that is made. every warship that is launched, every rocket fires
signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed,
those who are cold and are not clothed.
--- President Dwight D. Eisenhower
------------------------------------------------------------
Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.
--- Mahatma Gandhi
------------------------------------------------------------
Revolution by design and invention is the only revolution tolerable to
all men, all societies, all political systems anywhere.
--- R. Buckminster Fuller "Geosocial Revolution", 1965 (in "Utopia or Oblivion" 1969)
Also appears in "Report on the 'Geosocial Revolution'" Saturday Review 16 September 1967
------------------------------------------------------------
Love is omni-inclusive,
Progressively exquisite,
Understanding and tender
And compassionately attuned
To other than self.
--- R. Buckminster Fuller
------------------------------------------------------------
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies
in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who
are cold and are not clothed.
--- Dwight Eisenhower
------------------------------------------------------------
When governments fear people, there is liberty.
When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.
--- Thomas Jefferson
------------------------------------------------------------
We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make
our election between economy and liberty or profusion and servitude.
If we run into such debt, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in
our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our
amusements, for our calling and our creeds...we [will] have no time
to think, no means of calling our miss-managers to account but be glad
to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the
necks of our fellow-sufferers.
And this is the tendency of all human governments. A departure from
principle in one instance becomes a precedent for another till the bulk
of society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery.
And the fore-horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation
follows that and in its train wretchedness and oppression.
--- Thomas Jefferson
------------------------------------------------------------
Everyone CAN do mathematics, philosophy, art, literature, etc....
--- Clarence F. Stephens
------------------------------------------------------------
Every rule can be broken, but no rule may be ingored.
--- from User's Guide to the LaTeX Beamer Class
------------------------------------------------------------
Going too far is as bad as not going far enough.
--- Chinese Proverb
------------------------------------------------------------
The essence of mathematics resides in its freedom.
--- Georg Cantor
------------------------------------------------------------
I'm not trying to counsel any of you to do anything really special
except to dare to think, and to dare to go with the truth, and to dare
to really love completely.
--- R. Buckminster Fuller
------------------------------------------------------------
Only understanding for our neighbors, justice in our dealings, and willingness
to help our fellow men can give human society permanence and assure security
for the individual.
--- Albert Einstein
------------------------------------------------------------
There was never a good war or a bad peace
--- Benjamin Franklin
------------------------------------------------------------
Everyone is born a genius, but the process of living de-geniuses them.
--Buckminster Fuller.
------------------------------------------------------------
I never submitted the whole system of my opinion to the creed of any party of
men whatever, in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else,
where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last
degradation of a free and moral agent. If I could not go to heaven but with a
party, I would not go there at all.
--- Thomas Jefferson
------------------------------------------------------------
We are not going to be able to operate our Spaceship Earth successfully
nor for much longer unless we see it as a whole spaceship and our fate
as common. It has to be everybody or nobody.
--- R. Buckminster Fuller
------------------------------------------------------------
But it should always be insisted that a mathematical subject is not to be
considered exhausted until it has become intuitively evident...
--- Felix Klein
------------------------------------------------------------
We live in a society that tends not to encourage women to take an
interest in computing, and furthermore, if they do, embarasses them
about it.
--- Hannah Wallach
------------------------------------------------------------
The major cause of problems are solutions.
--- Eric Severeid
------------------------------------------------------------
Thought must never be subordinated to any dogma, political party,
passion, interest, preconceived idea, to anything indeed, except the
facts themselves ...
--- Henri Poincaré
------------------------------------------------------------
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able,
but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence
then is evil?
--- Epicurus
------------------------------------------------------------
The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason.
--- Benjamin Franklin
------------------------------------------------------------
Life doesn't cease to be funny when people die or cease to be serious
when people laugh.
--- George Bernard Shaw
------------------------------------------------------------
Mathematics is not the rigid and rigidity-producing schema that the layman
thinks it is; rather, in it we find ourselves at that meeting point of
constraint and freedom that is the very essence of human nature.
--- Hermann Weyl
------------------------------------------------------------
The more we learn the more we realize how little we know.
--- R. Buckminster Fuller
------------------------------------------------------------
Human integrity is the uncompromising courage of self-determining whether
or not to take initiatives, support or co-operate with others, in accord
with all the truth and nothing but the truth, as conceived by the divine
mind, always available in each individual.
--- R. Buckminster Fuller
------------------------------------------------------------
The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.
--- Ghandi
------------------------------------------------------------
All professions are conspiracies against the laity,
--- George Bernard Shaw
------------------------------------------------------------
A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful
than a life spent doing nothing.
--- George Bernard Shaw
------------------------------------------------------------
It is better to have an approximate answer to the right question than an exact
answer to the wrong one.
--- John Tukey
------------------------------------------------------------
The conception of chance enters in the very first steps of scientific activity
in virtue of the fact that no observation is absolutely correct. I think
chance is a more fundamental conception than causality; for whether in a
concrete case, a cause-effect relation holds or not can only be judged by
applying the laws of chance to the observation.
--- Max Born
------------------------------------------------------------
When you have eliminated the impossible, what ever remains, however
improbable, must be the truth.
--- Sir Arther Conan Doyle
------------------------------------------------------------
There are two times in a man's life when he should not speculate; when he
can't afford it, and when he can.
--- Mark Twain
------------------------------------------------------------
There is no such thing as a failed experiment, only experiments
with unexpected outcomes.
--- R. Buckminster Fuller
------------------------------------------------------------
The past is prophetic in that it asserts loudly that wars are poor chisels
for carving out peaceful tomorrows. One day we must come to see that
peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which
we arrive at that goal. We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful
means. How much longer must we play at deadly war games before we heed
the plaintive pleas of the unnumbered dead and maimed of past wars?
--- Martin Luther King, Jr.
------------------------------------------------------------
The way to succeed is to double your error rate.
--- Thomas J. Watson
------------------------------------------------------------
To ask the right questions is harder than to answer it.
--- Georg Cantor
------------------------------------------------------------
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
--- Aldous Huxley, novelist (1894-1963)
------------------------------------------------------------
No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy.
--- Field Marshall Helmuth Carl Bernard von Moltke
------------------------------------------------------------
The highest and best form of efficiency is the spontaneous cooperation
of a free people.
--- President Woodrow Wilson
------------------------------------------------------------
Man's mind stretched to a new idea never goes back to its original dimensions.
--- Oliver Wendell Holmes
------------------------------------------------------------
Courage is not the absence of fear. Rather it is the capacity to move
ahead in spite of fear.
--- Rollo May
------------------------------------------------------------
If I were not an atheist, I would believe in a God who would choose to save
people on the basis of the totality of their lives, and not the pattern of
their words. I think He would prefer an honest and righteous atheist to a TV
preacher whose every word is God, God, God, and whose every deed is foul,
foul, foul.
--- Isaac Asimov
------------------------------------------------------------
There are no nations! There is only humanity. And if we don't come to
understand that right soon, there will be no nations, because there will
be no humanity.
--- Isaac Asimov, in _I. Asimov: A Memoir_
------------------------------------------------------------
A hacker is someone who thinks outside the box. It's someone who
discards conventional wisdom, and does something else instead. It's
someone who looks at the edge and wonders what's beyond. It's someone
who sees a set of rules and wonders what happens if you don't follow
them. A hacker is someone who experiments with the limitations of
systems for intellectual curiosity.
--- Bruce Schneier
------------------------------------------------------------
Of all the will toward the ideal in mankind only a small part can manifest
itself in public action. All the rest of this force must be content with small
and obscure deeds. The sum of these, however, is a thousand times stronger
than the acts of those who receive wide public recognition. The latter,
compared to the former, are like the foam on the waves of a deep ocean.
--- Albert Schweitzer
------------------------------------------------------------
People should think things out fresh and not just accept conventional terms
and the conventional way of doing things.
--- Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983)
------------------------------------------------------------
There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you its going to be a butterfly.
--- Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983)
------------------------------------------------------------
Design science is more than the application of engineering and
technology. It is more than a plan or a design. Design science means
the total responsibility and capability for development, production,
and distribution - of not just a product - but a total service system
on a worldwide basis.
--- Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983)
------------------------------------------------------------
We are called to be architects of the future, not its victims.
[The challenge is] to make the world work for 100% of humanity in
the shortest possible time, with spontaneous cooperation and without
ecological damage or disadvantage of anyone.
--- Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983)
------------------------------------------------------------
It is a bad plan that admits of no modification.
--- Publilius Syrus, Maxim 469
------------------------------------------------------------
There are some remedies worse than the disease.
--- Publilius Syrus, Maxim 301
------------------------------------------------------------
I only learn what to do when I have failures.
--- R. Buckminster Fuller
------------------------------------------------------------
But ultimately a regulation is a signal of design failure.
--- William McDonough
------------------------------------------------------------
The stone age didn't end because we ran out of stones.
--- William McDonough
------------------------------------------------------------
How can we make the world work for 100 percent of humanity in the shortest
possible time through spontaneous cooperation without ecological damage
or disadvantage to anyone?
--- Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983)
------------------------------------------------------------
Trust not your self; but your Defects to know,
Make use of ev'ry Friend--and ev'ry Foe.
--- Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
------------------------------------------------------------
When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall
one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.
--- Edmund Burke
------------------------------------------------------------
I learned very early and painfully that you have to decide at the outset
whether you are trying to make money or to make sense, as they are mutually
exclusive.
--- R. Buckminster Fuller
------------------------------------------------------------
Mathematics is the science of structure and pattern in general.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
Department of Mathematics
------------------------------------------------------------
Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are
in harmony.
--- Mahatma Gandhi
------------------------------------------------------------
Tell me something is impossible and I will set about it immediately.
--- H. S. M. Coxeter
------------------------------------------------------------
One must never speak of anything dead in mathematics because the day
after one says it, someone takes this theory, introduces a new idea
into it and it lives again.
--- Jean Dieudonné
------------------------------------------------------------
The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over
any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent
harm to others ... over himself, over his own body and mind, the
individual is sovereign.
--- John Stuart Mill 'On Liberty' 1859
------------------------------------------------------------
We must have images; we cannot have images.
We must have scientific images because only images can teach us. Only
pictures can develop within us the intuition needed to proceed further
toward abstraction ... We are human, and as such, we depend on specificity
and materiality to learn and understand ... What are we humans good at?
We are good at recognizing and seizing upon visual patters ... And yet:
we cannot have images because images deceive ... We are human and as
such are easily led astray by the siren call of material specificity.
Logic, not imagery, is the acid test of truth that strips away the shoddy
inferences that accompany the mis-seeing eye.
--- Peter Galison
------------------------------------------------------------
At every moment in every person's life there is work to be done, always
work to be done, some of it small, some of it Great. The Great Work, in
a sense, always has to do with healing the world, changing the world,
and, as a necessary predicate to that, understanding the world. You
rise every morning aware that you are called to this work. You won't
live to see it finished. But if you can't hear it calling, you aren't
listening hard enough. It's always calling, sometimes in a big voice,
sometimes in a quiet voice.
--- Tony Kushner
------------------------------------------------------------
I have come to know that geometry is at the very heart of feeling,
and that each expression of feeling is made by a movement goverened
by geometry. Geometry is everywhere in nature.
--- François Auguste Rene Rodin (1840-1917)
------------------------------------------------------------
There is perhaps no better way to prepare for the scientific breakthroughs of
tomorrow than to learn the language of geometry.
--- Brian Greene
------------------------------------------------------------
Mathematics is principally a tool to meditate, rather than to compute.
--- Nassim Nicholas Taleb
------------------------------------------------------------
Whether we are able to be a complete success or failure is in such
critical balance that every smallest human test of integrity every
smallest moment-to-moment decision tips the scales affirmatively or
negatively.
--- R. Buckminster Fuller
------------------------------------------------------------
The doctrine that the world is made up of objects whose existence is
independent of human consciousness turns out to be in conflict with quantum
mechanics and with facts established by experiment.
--- Bernard d'Espagnat
------------------------------------------------------------
We humans are manifestly here for problem-solving and, if we are any good
at problem-solving, we don't come to utopia, we come to more difficult
problems to solve.
--- R. Buckminster Fuller
------------------------------------------------------------
If you haven't found something strange during the day, it hasn't been
much of a day.
--- John Wheeler
------------------------------------------------------------
Status quo
Is a multidimensional tapestry
Of what has been
And will never be again.
And is, ipso facto,
No longer existent.
--- R. Buckminster Fuller, And It Came To Pass --- Not To Stay, p. 131
------------------------------------------------------------
No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but
names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what
is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against it.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
------------------------------------------------------------
For truth is eternal and divine, and no phase in the development of truth,
however small may be the region encompassed, can pass on without leaving
a trace; truth remains, even though the garment in which poor mortals
clothe it may fall to dust.
Hermann Günther Grassmann, Die Ausdehnungslehre, 1862
------------------------------------------------------------
Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson
------------------------------------------------------------
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself.
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
--­ Walt Whitman
------------------------------------------------------------
I am quite confident that if in the evolutionary processes we deliberately
attempt direct personal exploitation of the economic advantages accruing
to our personal scientific explorations, we inadvertently become
precoccupied and prejudiced with the item we have to sell and are no
longer free to explore scientifically with a wholesome intellectual
integrity."
--- Buckminster Fuller, Education Automation
------------------------------------------------------------
It's not ignorance does so much damage;
it's knowing so darned much that ain't so.
--- Josh Billings
------------------------------------------------------------
In my viewpoint, there is no meaning to the word "artificial." Man can
only do what nature permits him to do. Man does not invent anything.
He makes discoveries of principles operative in nature and often finds
ways of generalizing those principles and reapplying them in surprise
directions. That is called invention. But he does not do anything
artificial. Nature has to permit it, and if nature permits it, it
is natural. There is naught which is unnatural.
--- Buckminster Fuller, Education Automation
------------------------------------------------------------
When you wish to achieve results that have not been achieved before, it
is an unwise fancy to think that they can be achieved by using methods
that have been used before.
--- Sir Francis Bacon
------------------------------------------------------------
Success is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.
--- Winston Churchill
------------------------------------------------------------
Don't worry about people stealing an idea. If it's original, you will
have to ram it down their throats.
--- Howard Aiken
------------------------------------------------------------
Mistakes aren't things to be discouraged. On the contrary, they should be
cultivated and carefully investigated.
---Jonah Lehrer
------------------------------------------------------------
Chance favors the connected mind.
--- Steven Johnson
------------------------------------------------------------
If you want to shrink something,
you must first stretch it;
if you want to weaken something,
you must first strengthen it;
if you want to reject something,
you must first promote it;
if you want to take something,
you must first give it:
this is called subtle enlightenment.
The soft and yielding
overcome the hard and rigid.
Let your workings remain a mystery.
Just show people the results.
--- Laozi (Lao Tzu), Daodejing (Tao Te Ching) 36
------------------------------------------------------------
True mastery can be gained
by letting things go their own way.
It can't be gained by interfering.
--- Laozi (Lao Tzu), Daodejing (Tao Te Ching) 48
------------------------------------------------------------
Nothing in the world
is as soft and yielding as water.
Yet for dissolving the hard and
inflexible,
nothing can surpass it.
The soft overcomes the hard;
the gentle overcomes the rigid.
Everyone knows this is true,
but few can put it into practice.
--- Laozi (Lao Tzu), Daodejing (Tao Te Ching) 78
------------------------------------------------------------
Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.
--- Ralph Waldo Emerson
------------------------------------------------------------
It is our duty---as men and women---to behave as though limits to our
ability do not exist. We are collaborators in creation of the Universe.
---Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
------------------------------------------------------------
[Science is] the process of playing with rules that enables one to reveal
previously unseen patterns of relationships that extend our collective
understanding of nature and human nature.
--- Paper by R.B. Lotto and 25 8- to 10-year old children
http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2010/12/18/rsbl.2010.1056.full.pdf
------------------------------------------------------------
A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making
them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new
generation grows up that is familiar with it.
--- Max Planck
------------------------------------------------------------
The usefulness of mathematics, commonly allowed to its elementary parts, not
only does not stop in higher mathematics but is in fact so much greater, the
further that science is developed.
--- Leonhard Euler, 1741
------------------------------------------------------------
Every age has its myths and calls them higher truths.
--- Anonymous
------------------------------------------------------------
Ancient and rooted prejudices do often pass into principles; and those
propositions which once obtain the force and credit of a principle,
are not only themselves, but likewise whatever is deducible from them,
thought privileged from all examination.
--- Bishop George Berkeley (1685 - 1753)
------------------------------------------------------------
Scientists need to work outside their own areas of expertise to make new
technologies that are pertinent to the 21st century and to collaborate,
both with other scientific disciplines and the arts and humanities.
---Rachel Armstrong
------------------------------------------------------------
Human perception is not a direct consequence of reality but rather an act of
imagination. Perception requires imagination because the data people encounter
in their lives are never complete and always equivocal.
--- Leonard Mlodinow, The Drunkard's Walk, 2008
------------------------------------------------------------
The miracle of our minds isn't that we can see the world as it is,
it's that we can see it as it isn't.
--- Kathryn Schulz
------------------------------------------------------------
How often I found where I should be going only by setting out for
somewhere else.
--- Buckminster Fuller
------------------------------------------------------------
Compassion is the basis of all morality."
--- Arthur Schopenhauer
------------------------------------------------------------
Statistical and applied probabilistic knowledge is the core of knowledge;
statistics is what tells you if something is true, false, or merely
anecdotal; it is the "logic of science"; it is the instrument of
risk-taking; it is the applied tools of epistemology [...].
--- Nassim Nicholas Taleb
------------------------------------------------------------
Of course, our failures are a consequence of many factors, but possibly
one of the most important is the fact that society operates on the
theory that specialization is the key to success, not realizing that
specialization precludes comprehensive thinking.
--- R. Buckminster Fuller, Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, 1963
------------------------------------------------------------
In its complexities of design integrity, the Universe is technology.
The technology evolved by man is thus far amateurish compared to the
elegance of nonhumanly contrived regeneration. Man does not spontaneously
recognize technology other than his own, so he speaks of the rest as
something he ignorantly calls nature.
--- R. Buckminster Fuller, Synergetics
------------------------------------------------------------
Don't undertake a project unless it is manifestly important and nearly impossible.
--- Edwin Land, Inventor
------------------------------------------------------------
I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I
have of it.
--- Thomas Jefferson
------------------------------------------------------------
There is, in fact, no such thing as cause and effect. It is a popular
chimera, a vague notion that will not withstand the batterings of
pure reason.
--- David Salsburg, The Lady Tasting Tea, 2002
------------------------------------------------------------
If perception is reality, then it follows that reality is
perception. Which makes a good case for optimism.
--- Simon Sinek
------------------------------------------------------------
If you find from your own experience that something is a fact and it
contradicts what some authority has written down, then you must abandon the
authority and base your reasoning on your own findings.
--- Leonardo da Vinci
------------------------------------------------------------
Forces ... the abstract entities which are the substance of mathematics
... Epistemologically these are myths on the same footing with physical
objects and gods, neither better nor worse except for differences in
the degree to which they expedite our dealings with sense experiences.
--- Willard Van Orman Quine, "Two Dogmas of Empiricism", 1951
------------------------------------------------------------
The human economy is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Earth's natural
systems.
--- Paul Ehrlich
------------------------------------------------------------
The importance of man in the next generation of technical research is very
much greater than in the previous. The computer cannot ask an original
question. The computer can only reask questions which were originally asked
by the human brain. No computer can apprehend the plurality of potentially
significant patterns newly emergent in evolution. Men will continue and
flourish as the great question askers and exploratory inventors.
--- R. Buckminster Fuller
------------------------------------------------------------
The outstanding faults of the economic society in which we live are its
failure to provide for full employment and its arbitrary and inequitable
distribution of wealth and income.
--- John Maynard Keynes
------------------------------------------------------------
The greatest challenge today, not just in cell biology and ecology but
in all of science, is the accurate and complete description of complex
systems. Scientists have broken down many kinds of systems. They think
they know most of the elements and forces. The next task is to reassemble
them, at least in mathematical models that capture the key properties
of the entire ensembles.
--- E. O. Wilson, Consilience p.85.
------------------------------------------------------------
Money always has the potential to become a moral imperative unto itself.
Allow it to expand, and it can quickly become a morality so imperative
that all others seem frivolous in comparison.
--- David Graeber, Debt: The First 5,000 Years, p. 319
------------------------------------------------------------
"If people were always kind and obedient to those who are cruel and
unjust, the wicked people would have it all their own way: they would
never feel afraid, and so they would never alter, but would grow worse
and worse. When we are struck at without a reason, we should strike back
again very hard; I am sure we should -- so as to teach the person who
struck us never to do it again."
--- Charlotte Brontë's character Jane Eyre, 1847
------------------------------------------------------------
"In order to maintain the world,
your obligation is to act."
--- Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 3, verse 20
------------------------------------------------------------
The sciences do not try to explain, they hardly even try to interpret, they
mainly make models. By a model is meant a mathematical construct which, with
the addition of certain verbal interpretations, describes observed phenomena.
The justification of such a mathematical construct is solely and precisely
that it is expected to work.
--- John von Neumann
------------------------------------------------------------
[W]e others who thirst after reason, are determined to scrutinize our
experiences as severely as a scientific experiment---hour after hour, day
after day. We ourselves wish to be our experiments and guinea pigs.
--- Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science #319
------------------------------------------------------------
Cause and effect: such a duality probably never exists; in truth we are
confronted by a continuum out of which we isolate a couple of pieces,
just as we perceive motion only as isolated points and then infer it
without ever actually seeing it. The suddenness with which many effects
stand out misleads us; actually, it is sudden only for us. In this moment
of suddenness there is an infinite number of processes that elude us. An
intellect that could see cause and effect as a continuum and a flux and
not, as we do, in terms of an arbitrary division and dismemberment, would
repudiate the concept of cause and effect and deny all conditionality.
--- Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science #112
------------------------------------------------------------
To teach that a comparatively few men are responsible for the greatest
forward steps of mankind is worst sort of nonsense.
--- Henry Ford
------------------------------------------------------------
Our Universe is finite but nonsimultaneously conceptual: a moving-picture
scenario of nonsimultaneous and only partially overlapping events. One single
picture---one frame---does not tell the story. The single-frame picture of a
caterpillar does not foretell or imply the transformation of that creature,
first, into the chrysalis stage and, much later, into the butterfly phase
of its life. Nor does one picture of a butterfly tell the viewer that the
butterfly can fly.
--- R. Buckminster Fuller, Synergetics 322.01
------------------------------------------------------------
I'm not trying to imitate nature, I'm trying to find the principles she's using.
--- R. Buckminster Fuller
------------------------------------------------------------
Religion can therefore be defined as a system of human laws and values,
which is founded on a belief in a superhuman order.
--- Yuval Harari
------------------------------------------------------------
No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thy friend's
Or of thine own were:
Any man's death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind,
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.
--- John Donne, 1624
------------------------------------------------------------
Buckminster Fuller's complex relationship to Biomimetics:
"The development of synergetics did not commence with the study of these
structures of nature, seeking to understand their logic. ... I did not copy
nature's structural patterns. ... I began to explore structure and develop it
in pure mathematical principle, out of which the patterns emerged in pure
principle and developed themselves in pure principle. I then realized those
developed structural principles as physical forms and, in due course, applied
them to practical tasks."
--- R. Buckminster Fuller, Synergetics, 203.09
http://www.rwgrayprojects.com/synergetics/s02/p0000.html#203.09
------------------------------------------------------------
There is no single building block---there are only complexes of complex systems.
--- R. Buckminster Fuller, Critical Path, p. 7
------------------------------------------------------------
The words "artificial" and "failure" are meaningless, for what they
aver is experimentally "nonexistent." If Nature permits a formulation it
is natural. If Nature's laws of behavior do not permit the formulation,
the latter does not occur. Whatever can be done or occurs is natural,
no matter how grotesque, bor ing, unfamiliar, or unprecedented.
--- R. Buckminster Fuller, "How Little I Know" Saturday Review 12 November 1966
------------------------------------------------------------
Nature never "fails." Nature complies with its own laws. Nature is the
law. When Man lacks understanding of Nature's laws and a Man-contrived
structure buckles unexpectedly, it does not fail. It only demonstrates
that Man did not understand Nature's laws and behaviors. Nothing failed,
Man's knowledge or estimating was inadequate.
--- R. Buckminster Fuller, "How Little I Know" Saturday Review 12 November 1966
------------------------------------------------------------
Science is the earnest attempt to set in order the facts of experience.
--- R. Buckminster Fuller cites Arthur Eddington and Sir James Jeans (Critical
Path, p. 43) with this quote. However both citations appear incorrect.
Extensive searching on-line suggest that neither Eddington nor Jeans
ever gave such a definition. But more research may yet identify a
source passage.
------------------------------------------------------------
Here artists and philosophers and those whom the action of the world has
elevated and made keen, do not live in isolation but breathe a common air,
and catch light and heat from each other's thoughts.
--- Walter Pater as quoted by James R. Killian, Jr. in "Approaching the Benign
Environment", pp. 160-161 (1970).
------------------------------------------------------------
[T]he individual must plunge earnestly and dedicatedly into initiating
self-development using the resources of the educational system.
--- R. Buckminster Fuller, "Critical Path", p. 237
------------------------------------------------------------
What was I thinking about before I was first told, convincingly, that
I had to 'earn a living' by doing what someone else said I had to do?
--- R. Buckminster Fuller, "Critical Path", p. 266
------------------------------------------------------------
The world can be made to work successfully for all, and we know how to do it.
--- R. Buckminster Fuller in "Geosocial Revolution" in "Utopia or Oblivion", p. 206
------------------------------------------------------------
The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be
bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior.
What demon possessed me that I behaved so well?
--- Henry David Thoreau
------------------------------------------------------------
essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful.
--- George Box, "Empirical Model-Building and Response Surfaces", 1987, p. 424.
------------------------------------------------------------
Commitment to an idea or a person can bring the world into clear focus.
--- Susan S. Szenasy
------------------------------------------------------------
The intensely local is universal
--- Frida Kahlo as quoted by Susan S. Szenasy,
http://www.metropolismag.com/December-1969/Interior-DesignersYour-Image-Isn-rsquot-Working-for-You/
------------------------------------------------------------
We're all advocates for design change.
--- Susan S. Szenasy in "Szenasy, Design Advocate" p. 277
------------------------------------------------------------
here is our wish list for the design ethos of the twenty-first century: we
need objects that are not only beautiful, affordable, enduring, functional,
ergonomic, accessible, sustainable, and well made but also emotionally
resonant and socially beneficial.
--- Susan S. Szenasy in "Szenasy, Design Advocate" p. 281
------------------------------------------------------------
What matters is the toolbox of ideas with which, by with, through which
we experience and interpret the world.
--- EF Schumacher, 1963 cited by http://y2u.be/I7WiBJkw4is
------------------------------------------------------------
We are on a permanent search for temporary truth.
---Paolo Lugari
------------------------------------------------------------
"Art is Everything you don't have to do."
--- Brian Eno (quoted in Steven Johnson's talk http://longnow.org/seminars/02017/jan/04/wonderland-how-play-made-modern-world)
------------------------------------------------------------
"Patrotism is usually the refuse of the scoundrel."
-- Mark Twain, Education and Citizenship,
http://www.archive.org/download/marktwains_speeches_1309_librivox/marktwainsspeeches_037_twain_128kb.mp3
------------------------------------------------------------
"Great things may come of little things"
-- Mark Twain, Education and Citizenship,
http://www.archive.org/download/marktwains_speeches_1309_librivox/marktwainsspeeches_037_twain_128kb.mp3
------------------------------------------------------------
"I left Earth three times. I found no place else to go. Please take care of Spaceship Earth."
-- Wally Schirra, Apollo astronaut, quoted in "Buckminster Fuller: Anthology for the Millennium" p. 405
------------------------------------------------------------
"Some day, birth control will be an indispensable act of peace, just as
unrestricted reproduction--now claimed as a natural right everywhere and
encouraged by churches and governments--is in itself a potential act of
conquest."
-- Karl Jaspers, "The Future of Mankind", p. 178
------------------------------------------------------------
"From this time onward, the danger of mankind perishing by human action will
always be with us--it will never vanish again. It will have to be met
constantly and surmounted afresh, and it is under this pressure that man can
rise to his highest potentialities. The moment he relaxes in the illusion of
final success, the extreme menace will once more be real, and he will finally
lose his mere existence, after all."
-- Karl Jaspers, "The Future of Mankind", p. 182.
------------------------------------------------------------
"[T]he connection between thought and sense experience, inherent in the human
condition, seems to take its revenge: while technology demonstrates the
``truth'' of modern science's most abstract concepts, it demonstrates no more
than that man can always apply the results of his mind, that no matter which
system he uses for the explanation of natural phenomena he will always be able
to adopt it as a guiding principle for making and acting."
-- Hannah Arendt, "The Human Condition", p. 287
------------------------------------------------------------
"If scientists today point out that we may assume with equal validity that the
earth turns around the sun or the sun turns around the earth, that both
assumptions are in agreement with observed phenomena and the difference is
only a difference of the cosen point of reference"
-- Hannah Arendt, "The Human Condition", p. 263
------------------------------------------------------------
Man [is a] tool-making animal.
-- Benjamin Franklin, Quoted by James Boswell in "The Life of Samuel Johnson"
------------------------------------------------------------
Understand simple things deeply.
-- Michael Starbird, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clX_AS38yL8
------------------------------------------------------------
I never saw an instance of one or two disputants convincing the other by argument.
-- Thomas Jefferson (quoted on p. 17 of "Dialogue and the Art of Thinking Together" by William Isaacs)
------------------------------------------------------------
If you want to teach people a new way of thinking, don't bother trying
to teach them. Instead, give them a tool, the use of which will lead to
new ways of thinking.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller, https://www.facebook.com/BuckminsterFullerInstitute/photos/a.139494043585/10157106285078586/
------------------------------------------------------------
Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the
questions themselves ...
Live the questions. Perhaps then ... you will gradually, without even noticing
it, live your way into the answer.
-- Rainer Maria Rilke (quoted by Jeanne M. Liedtka at
https://www.coursera.org/learn/uva-darden-design-thinking-innovation/lecture/OLJkN/strategic-opportunities)
------------------------------------------------------------
[T]here is no such thing as a man who exists singly and solely on his own.
-- Martin Heidegger, "The Question Concerning Technology"
------------------------------------------------------------
Initiative springs only from within the individual. Initiative can neither
be created nor delegated. It can only be vacated. Initiative can only be
taken by the individual on his own self-conviction of the necessity to
overcome his conditioned reflexing which has accustomed him theretofore
always to yield authority to the wisdom of others. Initiative is only
innate and highly perishable.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller, "Geosocial Revolution" 1965 (in Utopia or Oblivion, 1969)
------------------------------------------------------------
In the big picture, I see man [sic.] as the first living species to
consciously participate in the alteration of his ecological patterning,
and I see that he has done this by the development of tools.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller, "How to Maintain Man [sic.] as a Success in Universe",
1965 (in Utopia or Oblivion, 1969)
------------------------------------------------------------
In order to be able to develop the total complex of humanity's
ever-improvingly efficient capabilities, we must attain increasingly
swift access to all the resources of the planet and eventually of the
universe at large of earth and of the solar system and of the universe
beyond and within.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller, "How to Maintain Man [sic.] as a Success in Universe",
1965 (in Utopia or Oblivion, 1969)
------------------------------------------------------------
[A] problem adequately stated is a problem fundamentally ripe and potential of
solution.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller, "Design Strategy" 1966 (in Utopia or Oblivion, 1969)
------------------------------------------------------------
Designing things is designing human existence. ...
Designing technology is designing humanity, in as sense.
-- Peter-Paul Verbeek, interactions 22, 3 (April 2015), pp. 26-31,
http://interactions.acm.org/archive/view/may-june-2015/beyond-interaction
------------------------------------------------------------
Design is to design a design to produce a design.
-- John Heskett
------------------------------------------------------------
A new, physically uncompromised, metaphysical initiative of unbiased
integrity could unify the world.
--- Buckminster Fuller in "Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth"
------------------------------------------------------------
You and I can go out and take a sunbath, but are unable to take in enough
energy through our skins to keep alive.
--- Buckminster Fuller in "Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth"
------------------------------------------------------------
We have not been seeing our Spaceship Earth as an integrally-designed
machine which to be persistently successful must be comprehended and
serviced in total.
--- Buckminster Fuller in "Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth"
------------------------------------------------------------
One of humanity's prime drives is to understand and be understood.
--- Buckminster Fuller in "Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth"

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